I Swear I Saw
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: During a case, an old alliance of Ziva's reveals a home truth that could threaten her relationships with her team. Will one of her team mates step up and show her what really matters? Tony/Ziva


I Swear I Saw

It wasn't that late when Ziva arrived back in her hotel room, but she hadn't been out for long in the first place. She'd glanced at her watch in the elevator and saw that it was only ten minutes past nine o'clock, but she still felt exhausted. The case they were working on at the moment was a touch too personal for her liking; involving an old partner of hers from Mossad whom had turned bad and was now working against them. Akan had been her first partner in Mossad, despite her insistence that she worked better alone, and they had worked together for three years before he disappeared. She'd been told he was a traitor, and there were many nights when she'd been left wondering why she hadn't picked up on his treachery when she'd worked so closely with him. After that, she never had a partner in Mossad. However, with Akan now in the US her past had caught up with her once again. He'd tracked her down as easily as she knew he might, and within two hours of learning about his presence in the state he'd sent her a message; proposing that she meet him for dinner in a hotel far away from NCIS, promising to reveal who he was working with and what they were planning if she attended.

Obviously, with several nuclear weapons missing and many links that tied him to the disappearance, she'd had to accept his invitation. She'd been rather indifferent when she'd been dropped off outside the hotel in a taxi, knowing that Gibbs, Tony and McGee had already booked into their own rooms at the hotel that afternoon. She also had a room, and arrived two hours before the dinner reservation to change and get ready. She wasn't worried when she found a package on her bed as she knew that it was from her team-mates, containing a listening device which they would each monitor from different positions in the hotel, Gibbs and Tony in the restaurant where they would be meeting with Jenny to maintain their cover, and McGee up in the hotel room monitoring surveillance. She was more worried that she'd have to brush off anything Akan said to her that involved personal matters.

Dinner hadn't gone well, to say the least. She'd caught Tony's eye as she entered the hotel resturant, exacty on time. She immediately looked away, as if she'd only glanced at him in passing, and approached the table not to far away where Akan was waiting for her. As Akan held out a chair for her, she felt Tony's eyes sweeping over her, and for once the feeling of being watched was comforting. She couldn't help but feel the irony of it now, as she waited for the elevator to arrive at her floor. She'd spent two hours getting ready; showering, doing her hair, and then forcing herself to leave the apartment, and it was all over before they'd even finished the entrees.

When the elevator doors pinged open on her floor, she found herself fighting tears. She stepped into the hall, hearing footsteps from the other end, and she moved quickly into her own room, struggling with her key for a moment as her hands were shaking. She heard McGee calling her, his voice concerned as he had heard exactly what Akan had said to her, as had everyone else, but she ignored his call, ducking into her room and closing the door behind her. She was still for a moment, watching the shadow beneath the door until it disappeared, signalling that McGee had gone, and then she moved quickly around the room.

She took off the shrug wrap that had lain around her shoulders, throwing it across the room so that it landed on the dresser, knocking off one of the perfume bottles onto the plush carpeting. The stress of the reunion with Akan had finally reached breaking point and a lump began burning in her throat as tears leaked from her eyes, ruining the perfect make-up that she'd spent hours on. Of course, the majority of it was waterproof, but tears were always a sure way of ruining ones appearance. She reached up to her dark hair, taking out the clips that held it firmly in place. It was strange how she had spent so long making sure her untamable hair would hold, and now she couldn't get it hanging around her shoulders fast enough. Then the dress had to go. The black fabric felt like it was eating at her skin, surrounding her like Akan's words had done. She stood there for a moment, the fabric on the floor around her feet, finally feeling like she was free from his words, but his voice was still echoing in the back of her mind. She changed into a pair of black sweat pants and a grey NCIS t-shirt, ready for the sleep that she probably wouldn't get that night, and threw herself onto the end of the bed, sitting with her head in her hands.

Akan had revealed her secret, she realised. Whilst she had many secrets from her team, especially considering her previous life with Mossad, there was only one that she'd promised herself she'd never reveal, and only one person knew the truth. Only Gibbs knew, and he had protected her from the consequences that her own people would willingly serve, but he couldn't protect her from being out casted from the team who had come to be considered family by her. Akan hadn't known that they were being listened to by NCIS agents, but he had still revealed that she was the one who killed Ari. Over his shoulder, Ziva had noticed Tony's head whip towards them, but she didn't take her eyes away from Akan. Akan who, moments, later, asked her why she would kill her own brother.

Ziva wasn't sure how much time had passed before she stopped crying, but eventually her sobs calmed into weak whimpers as the trembling began to cease. She heard a soft knocking on her door, but she didn't move to answer it. She didn't want to talk to whoever was on the other side, knowing that questions concerning Ari would follow and she'd eventually be hated by Tony, McGee and Abby, for not only concealing such a horrific truth from them, but for carrying on the bloodline of the man who had murdered their friend, simply by breathing.

Whoever was at the door left after a few minutes of waiting, and she bowed her head once more. However, only a few minutes later there was another sound at the door. She whipped her head up, wondering who on Earth was trying to get into her room, and even more so wondering how they had a key. Her hands reached for a weapon of some kind but she was wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, not her usual attire where she could conceal any weaponry she could imagine. So, in her devastation she was left to wait as whoever was entering her room made themselves known.

Her tear streaked cheeks were obvious to the man who stood in the doorway, but she didn't move to wipe them away. Part of her wasn't surprised to see who it was that stood there, half concealed by illumination from the hall behind him in the darkness of her room, but she was rather surprised that he'd clearly gone to some means to get hold of a key to her room, especially after what had been revealed by Akan. He was silent, stepping into the hotel room and gently closing the door behind him. He crossed the room, sitting down beside her on the mattress, keeping a small gap between them on top of the blankets.

"Ari was your brother," he said simply. It wasn't a question, so she offered him no answer.

"What do you want, Tony?" she asked him, trying to keep the same tone of voice she might have in normal circumstances.

He stared down at his hands, and she assumed he was too disgusted to look at her. "Why didn't you tell us Ari was your brother?" he asked her. "Why didn't you tell _me_?"

"Honestly?" she asked, trying to sound nonchalant about it all but failing miserably because of her tears. He just nodded beside her. "I did not want people to hate me for my family."

"What makes you think we would have hated you?" he asked her, still staring at his hands.

"Ari killed Kate."

"And _you _killed Ari," Tony reminded her. "Why?"

"Ari killed Kate," she repeated. "He shot a good woman who didn't deserve to die. That is not what we were trained to do. Mossad are not heartless killers, but sometimes we are ordered to do things which we would not necessarily agree with, things which Ari and Akan have been trained to do since their birth."

"You killed your brother because he killed Kate," Tony repeated, slowy sounding out the words as if he were trying to understand them. "Because he was going to shoot Gibbs too..."

"He would have gone on to hurt many other innocent people," Ziva realised. "Brother or no brother."

And then there was silence again. Silence that she would have begged for ten minutes ago but now she just wanted to get it out of the way before it deafened her. "How did you get in here?" she asked him. "I have the only key."

"Went down to the lobby, told the receptionist you were my wife." She raised her eyebrows at him, but he continued to look straight down. "Said we had an argument and you locked me out. How are you holding up?" he asked her, his voice not changing, and he still looked at his hands.

"Does it matter?" she asked.

"It does to me," he nodded.

"I am good," she answered with a firm nod. It was clear, however, that she wasn't good, because her eyes were still streaming with tears. "Considering my entire life has been lain on a restaurant table by a man I used to trust with my life," she added.

There was a momentary silence where Tony wasn't exactly sure what to say to her. "He was just trying to get a rise out of you, Ziva," he explained. "I'm sure there wasn't any meaning behind it."

"That would be nice if it were true," she shook her head, knowing that Akan's taunts about her younger sister falling victim to an attack from Akan were true.

"None of what he said could have been your fault, Ziva," he said, finally raising his eyes from his hands to meet hers.

"He knows I kill Ari," she whispered. "Do you understand what that means?"

"He's not going to do anything," Tony assured her.

"It is not Akan I am worried about," she admitted. "Gibbs lied on the report, stating that it was he who shot Ari. Mossad believed him. If Mossad find out that I am the one who killed their agent then things will not be pretty, as you would say."

"What will they do?" he asked quietly.

"If I stay in America, they will send agents to serve me justice," she told him, and the thought of her opening a door to a bullet in the head sent shivers down both their spines. "However, they will probably recall me to Israel."

"Which won't be good," Tony assumed.

"What they will do there will be worse than what they will do if I stay here," she said. "Although, if they recall me to Israel I will have no choice but to go."

She took a moment to compose herself, but failed. She knew what horrible, endless punishments would await her back in Israel for killing Ari, punishments that kept her awake at night at the mere thought of them. Mossad finding out the truth about Ari's death was the one thing she could admit to herself she was afraid of. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Tony's knuckles were covered in blood. She frowned, taking it in her own and inspecting it. "Have you hit someone?" she asked, recognising the marks as her fingers dusted his skin gracefully.

"Akan," he said simply. "Gibbs and Jen arrested him, called Fornell and he came to pick him up to hold him before his sentencing. I uh...I didn't like that he'd upset you, so..." he trailed off, almost like a young boy who was proud of what he had done but was too ashamed to face his parents with it.

It made her smile a little to hear that tone in his voice, and she couldn't hold it back even though tears still sat on her her cheeks. As the corners of her lips raised ever so slightly, Tony put his arm around her. For a moment, she allowed herself to fall against his shoulder, taking comfort from him; the chaste kiss he planted on her temple made her realise what was happening, however, and she sat up almost immediately after his lips had left her skin. She was surprised to find that his hand remained on her back, comfortingly rubbing circles along the bottom of her spine as she started to wipe underneath her eyes.

"I am a mess," she said, dropping her hands in surrender where she was too exhausted, both physically and mentally, to try anymore.

"You're beautiful," Tony told her, without even thinking about his words.

However, when he realised that the words he'd been speaking in his head had been heard by Ziva, his breath hitched in his throat. Sure, he had been thinking it, but he didn't think he was ever going to tell her that. She was beautiful, even though she had tears on her cheeks, make up running, and puffy, red eyes from crying. She was beautiful, even though her eyes had lost their playful glitter which flared whenever she was in her element. She was beautiful even though she'd had her spirit broken. Ziva shook her head, as if unable to believe his words, but she was still replaying them over and over in her head. _You're beautiful_. It was like a song on repeat in her mind. As she listened to his words, his hand remained on her back, trailing across her spine through her t-shirt.

"Why do you not hate me?" she asked him.

"Because it was Ari who killed Kate," he told her. "Not you."

At this, she let the tears overwhelm her, unable to hold in the sobs that racked her body. Tony, who had made many girls cry in his life, pulled her closer to him and and held her reassuringly. This time, she didn't pull away from him and was rather glad that he, of all people, was there to comfort her. Gibbs was the only person who knew what she did to Ari, and he wasn't exactly someone she could go to to talk about it. She was glad that she was now able to talk about it with Tony, to stop it eating away at her insides. Thankfully, after a few minutes, she had cried herself hoarse, and all that was left was the salty residue of her tears. She didn't pull back from him even when she was finished with her outburst. Instead, she just kept her head rested on his shoulder. With all the emotion she'd held back during the short encounter with Akan, right up to the moment she stormed out of the restaurant, she was exhausted.

Tony also stayed where he was, realsing that the last time he was this close to Ziva, phsyically, they were working under cover. Emotionally, however, he didn't think he'd ever been this close to her. He hadn't realised, until he had walked into her room and seen her with tears on her face, how badly he wanted to hold her like he was at that moment. He wanted to be able to help her, and be able to make things better for her. At the same time, Ziva was realising how at home she felt in his arms. If they had known what the other was thinking, and how similar thier thoughts were, they would have been shocked, but perhaps not entirely surprised.

"Where are the others?" she asked, trying to break the silence that was slowly becoming awkward.

"Downstairs," he explained, even though she could hear the distraction in his voice. "The arrest was kinda public, so they're trying to calm things down."

"You should go back down," she suggested, even though her mind was screaming that she didn't want him to leave her. "You're working."

"So are you," he reminded her. "But I'm not going anywhere until I know you're all right," he added, his voice firm but soft.

Ziva didn't know what to say to that. She wasn't all right and she wanted him to stay, but she just couldn't find the words to say this without sounding more desperate than she cared to. Even though she said nothing, he didn't leave. He stayed exactly where he was and continued to hold her just as tightly. "Thank you," she finally managed to sigh. "Thank you, Tony."

"I don't know what you're thanking me for," he half-grumbled.

"For not hating me, despite my past and my family," she told him.

"Is everything Akan said about your life true?" he asked, almost hesitantly.

She nodded against him. "Yes."

He pulled her to him a little more. "I'm so sorry that you had to go through all of that," he whispered. "I'm sorry you had to put up with him tonight as well."

"I thought apologizing was a sign of weakness?" she tested him, trying to smile but failing.

"I think an apology is in order," he decided.

"You have nothing to apologize for," she pointed out to him. "It was my decision to meet with him tonight. We needed his information."

"That's the only reason I let you do this," Tony admitted, suddenly spilling out all the things that he had wanted to tell her when they first decided to turn this into an undercover investigation. "I saw you walking down those stairs, and I just couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen, and I didn't want anything to happen to you."

"I know what it is like to lose a partner," she sympathised.

"You're more than my partner," he told her, but when she looked up and questioned him with her eyes he had to fight to stop himself from actually blushing under her gaze. Blushing? Tony DiNozzo? She'd never let him forget it. "You're my friend, Ziva," he covered. She smiled a little, replacing her head on his shoulder once again. "I should have told Gibbs that this was a bad idea," he sighed.

"Do you think he would have listened to you?" she asked.

"We've listened to his gut enough times, haven't we?" he pointed out. "Perhaps it's about time my gut did some thinking of it's own."

"It appears your gut was right," she nodded against him.

"The last thing I wanted to do was hand you over to someone who was going to hurt you, and then when he started bringing up all that stuff about your past..." he trailed off, wondering why it was causing him so much discomfort to see Ziva like this. Was it because he wanted to protect her against the dark shadows of the American world that she didn't fully understand yet, or because he just wasn't used to seeing his Mossad ninja chick being so rattled by someone's words that she had retreated to a hotel room where she'd proceeded to sob her heart out into his shoulder.

_Don't lie to yourself, DiNozzo. You care about her._

"Why?" she asked him, a question that he didn't really want to answer, but he knew that he had to. This conversation had gone too far for them to take a step back now and pretend it had never happened.

"Because I care about you, Ziva," he whispered. His voice was quiet, but so was the room and his words reached her ears with ease. "I just don't want to see you get hurt, especially by a bastard like Akan." Ziva was silent for a moment, and he was worried that he'd been too forward, crossed too many lines, and she was contemplating which mini-hotel drinks bottle to kill him with, but the silence was broken by a yawn a moment later. "You're tired," he realised.

"It has been a long day," she nodded. "And an even longer night." Her mind was drained as well as her body and she was beginning to feel drawn to sleep. The warmth from Tony's body wasn't helping her desire to remain awake.

He nodded his head back to the bed, and she followed his gaze. "Here, lay down," he told her. She stood up, walking to the top end of the bed and settled down on the mattress. Tony followed her around the side, and when she lay comfortably he settled beside her, half-sitting and half-laying on atop the blankets beside her. "Better?" he asked her.

She closed her eyes and nodded, realising that she was resting her head in the gap between his neck and shoulder. One of his arms was wrapped around her, resting precariously on her hip beneath the blankets. He didn't dare himself to do anything else as he lay still beside her, but was surprised when her hand appeared above the blankets and took hold of his. "Tony?"

"Yeah?" he replied, trying to hide his suprise at the very feminine and un-Ziva-like action.

"I care about you, also," she told him, her eyes still closed and her body laying barely an inch from his.

He felt his heart racing when she spoke, and had they been any closer she probably would have felt his heart hammering away inside his chest. Of course, she was Ziva, and she probably knew that anyway. She probably told him that on purpose just to get that reaction out of him. Clutching her hand, he gave it a reassuring squeeze, along with a gentle kiss to her temple. He lingered for a few moments, and she could feel his warm breath on her skin. At that moment, she realised that she was truly safe with this man beside her; this man who had a reputation for having a different date every night of the week, and was willing to put on any show of charm to get them into bed; this man who knew how exhausted and vulnerable she was and refused to take advantage of her in the way that most men would have at this moment. There she was, lying in his arms, welcoming his touch, his gentle kisses, and he knew that it was for comfort and reassurance, so he couldn't bring himself to exploit her and take advantage of her like that. Not Ziva. Some girl in a bar who had just broken up with her boyfriend and was looking for a rebound, maybe. But not Ziva. Never her.

She kept her eyes closed, and after a few moments she was sure that convinced him she was asleep. She had been expecting him to leave once he thought she was sleeping, but at least half an hour passed and he stayed exactly in place, not even moving his hands. At this point, she realised that he was obviously not planning to leave her that night and she was glad for it. She felt the arm that was above the blankets being lifted, and then felt soft lips touch to her knuckles. She had to fight to hold back a smile, so much so that she turned her head into the pillow a little. Tony however, had seen her lips lift at the last moment before being hidden, and didn't even try to contain his smile. After a few more moments, knowing that she was safe in his arms, she fell into a deep sleep.

END


End file.
